Category Archives: Teaching

Saying Goodbye

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The hardest part of my job is saying goodbye. 

I am a college chemistry professor, and I spend four years investing in my students, teaching them, living life with them, learning from them, and giving them advice on classes and life.  I love what I do – it is a great job.  But the hardest part comes every May, when I watch them walk across the stage at graduation and out of my classroom for the last time. 

Some of these students have babysat my kids or watched my dog.  They’ve been over to my house for breakfast or dinner.  They’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of my life for four years.  I’ve walked with them through the death of friends and family, the deferral of dreams, the joy of engagements and acceptances to graduate of medical school, and so much more. 


My job is to prepare them to enter the world – as a servant, as a leader, and as a scientist.  My job is to show them what life can look like when you live it well – no matter the
struggles and difficulties placed before you. My job is to prepare my students to leave (and for that matter, my kids too – but that’s a blog post for another time), and if I have done that job
well, then saying goodbye should be easy – because I have succeeded. 

But when I succeed in my job, it means that I have to let them go.  I have to watch from afar as
they start careers, publish papers, make amazing scientific discoveries, care for patients, achieve further degrees, and more. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, when I do my job well, part of my heart leaves with my students.  And that hurts.   

These particular seniors have watched my kids enter the world and have watched them grow for nearly three years.  They have walked with me through the ups and downs of foster care, and cried happy tears with me when we got news of my son’s adoption.  They have challenged me and helped me to grow, and I have learned from them as they have learned from me. 

As I watch them go every spring, I wish them all the best in the world.  I know that they will
experience heartache and hardship, and I hope that what they have learned here
will help them through it.  I hope that when they are asked if their time in college was worth it, their answer will be yes – for the learning, the people, the lessons, and more.  I hope that they remember the life lessons they have learned in my office and in my classroom.  I hope that they live lives of servant leadership, stopping to have conversations with colleagues and patients,
sharing their faith and their passion with those around them. 



This post was originally shared on the Breathe Bravely blog.

Sometimes My Students Drive Me Crazy

Teaching, ,

By Kristen Mudrack

Sometimes my students drive me batty.  Absolutely batty.

And then they go and do things like show me that they actually learned something.  That they actually were paying attention.  That they actually do care.

I’ve always loved seeing them get it – understand a concept that they’d been struggling with, get a question right after trying five times, finally make a connection between things we had talked about.

I’m the professor that constantly has students in her office – usually more than one – which either makes me the worst teacher in the world, or my students feel comfortable enough with me to come ask me questions and work through problems in my office.  I’m going to choose to believe the latter.

Sometimes they drive me nuts with all of their questions and constant requests for more practice problems (you have a textbook!).  But most of all, I’m grateful that they are trying to learn and not just memorize answers.  I’m grateful that they do come and ask me questions instead of just pretend like they understand.

It drives me absolutely crazy when they turn in assignments late, when they procrastinate on things that they’ve been assigned since the beginning of the semester, or when they don’t show up for a meeting when they scheduled one with me.  I want to deck them when they try to pull one over on me or plagiarize.  But instead, I try to help them learn from their mistakes.  I give them grace and mercy, tough love, and a shoulder to cry on when they need it.

Then I see them get it – really get it – and I am so proud of them.  My Chemistry and Society (nonmajors) class just gave their final presentations on how they see chemistry in their life that they didn’t before.  And they blew me away with what they learned this year.

My goal in that class is to rock their worlds and show them that what they see in the media isn’t always the actual science.  To teach them to think critically about the world around them and to appreciate God’s creation all around them, in every minute detail.  To help them not hate chemistry and connect it to their everyday lives.

And they did.  They saw things differently than they did before.  They learned.  They analyzed.  And they don’t hate chemistry (which is a huge win in my book!).